


Heat

by yawworht17



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 14:22:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10664472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yawworht17/pseuds/yawworht17
Summary: Holtz' favourite heat source.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A very rough draft. Thinking about how much it meant to see a cool character who has trouble connecting.

Holtzmann is used to heat. 

Aluminum doesn't melt until over six hundred degrees, copper over nine hundred. 

Her oxyacetylene torch can reach over 3400 degrees Celsius (for underwater welding).

She knows, _knows_ that Erin can only be 37ish, maybe 38 degrees.

So it’s mystifying how she, crawling over Erin now, could be burning so completely. 

…

She had said it the other day, gently touching her shoulder as she hunched over a new schematic. “Love,” she said, gently squeezing her shoulder and tugging the goggles off her forehead, “We’re going to make dinner?” she reminded her, kissing her cheek. Erin was trying to be gentle, but Holtz’s breath caught anyway, because she never thought that anybody would remember her. Would invite her to something non-nuclear. Would look at her like that. She got to help chop the onions. 

And sure, Erin sometimes still looks at her like she’s crazy (because she is crazy), but then later that day she’ll look over from her workstation and pull out an earplug to say something, and she’s wearing earplugs because she knows that Jillian likes the music loud, and with that tiny gesture it’s like she’s screaming that she loves her.

She loves her.

She had never thought she would really have a friend. It wasn’t a sad thing anymore, she was just missing too many pieces. Maybe she had been sick the day they taught everybody to be normal. But that couldn’t be it, because Jillian never missed school. Maybe it was one of the grades she skipped. Eventually, it was too much work to pretend, and once they started calling her “Doctor Holtzmann,” people mostly left her alone with the things she liked, to be how she liked. And then she got Abby, and it didn’t hurt so much anymore. 

But then Erin had walked in, and Jillian was just Jillian, and Erin didn’t seem to mind, and then she seemed to like it. And Jillian didn’t have to change, and then Jillian was allowed to lean up next to her, and touch her, and kiss her, and she was in such disbelief that she kept asking permission until Erin, exasperated, had practically shouted, “Keep _going_.” After, she had interlaced their fingers and thanked her for asking, and explained that she really didn’t need to ask _every_ time because she would like for them to do this much more often, and Jillian had grinned and grinned. 

…

Erin slides a hand up her bare back.

“Hey,” she whispers, “where’d you go, Jill?”

Holtzmann shakes her head, “Sorry…”

Erin shakes her gently from below, making them jiggle, and making Holtz smile.

“Don’t be sorry, just be here. I want you here.”

And so, twisted in the sheets, Jillian melts. 


	2. Gaze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I found another chapter. The other point of view.  
> (Titular pun intended)

Erin is used to having eyes on her.

She doesn’t love it, necessarily, but it comes with the professional territory. She’s figured out how to button herself up, steel herself against it.

Her first class as an Assistant Professor had been Introductory Physics, the giant lecture that was a prerequisite for basically everything interesting. That was maybe 300 pairs of eyes, which were mostly open even though she taught in the morning. Seminar presentations were usually less than twenty pairs of eyes, but they were always attached to people who seemed to hold her fate in their hands.

But lying (completely buttonless) below a certain pair of light blue eyes, she remembers how alarming and transfixing eyes can be.

…

Holtzmann always looked so surprised when Erin tapped on her shoulder to let her know it was time for the bar, or when Abby hollered that it was her turn to choose where they ordered lunch. It was easy to miss, because it was followed by that radiant grin, or a (very sexy) smirk, but Erin saw that microflash of disbelief.

And she had asked so many questions, at first. “Is this OK?” “Like that?” “Do you want…” Which was great, but they were questions about the same things, things that Erin definitely wanted. Things that Erin knew Holtz had seen her enjoying, and that half the apartment building could probably have heard her enjoying, for God’s sake. And she saw those eyes searching her face, her body language, for clues Erin hadn’t known Jillian needed. 

She was nervous: she had never been a vocal partner. Her own voice always sounded ridiculous, the words insincere. But she realized that Jillian needed to hear the things she thought were obvious, and she realized that if she could remember to buy Pringles with her chickpeas, she could remember to do this too. So she found herself looking straight into those eyes and saying things she never thought she would, “I’m glad you’re here, Holtz” and “Please stay, Jill” and “You make me laugh,” and, “I love the way you taste.”

…

Erin sees those blue eyes drift to the headboard for a moment, and wonders how much can flash through Jillian’s mind in a single second.

She slides her hand upward with what she hopes is reassurance, and gives Jillian what she hopes is a playful shake. Feels a giggle deep in the ribcage pressed against hers.

And when those eyes come back to her, she says the most obvious thing, “I want you here,” which is all it takes to get Jillian back. 


End file.
